State lawmakers continue their break this week, but even though they’ve been away from the Capitol, Gov. Katie Hobbs has still been going through bills they sent her before they left. That’s left her just five vetoes away from the record she set two years ago.
Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what’s to come at the state Capitol.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Howie.
HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning. I am sure, sure, I'm willing to bet you breakfast that she will beat her old veto record.
BRODIE: All right, well, I might have to take you up on that, but for entertainment purposes only. So she's, as I said, five vetoes away, and there's still a good number of bills sort of in the pipeline in addition to the budget, which we would assume that when they said, when the Legislature sends her bills, they would be bills that have been negotiated she wouldn't have to veto those.
FISCHER: Well, that's the assumption, of course, you know, governors have on occasion vetoed budgets to make a point and as you also know, because of the way the budget has to be structured, if you kill the whole budget, that's like 11 bills right there.
BRODIE: Right.
FISCHER: So even leaving that aside, as you point out, there are a lot of things that are still out there that we're waiting to see, are they going to send them to the governor? Several of them are tax cuts, you know, there's one that would cut the state income tax rate. This on top of some cuts that were made the last couple of years under the Ducey administration. There's another, for example, that says the money that you withdraw from your IRAs would be tax-free, probably both veto bait.
There are some election issues in there that lawmakers, Republican lawmakers are trying to say we need this to ensure that there is no fraud or abuse, despite the fact of the lack of that, but they want to throw some more hurdles in there.
And then finally, groundwater. The governor's made it very clear she'd like a comprehensive solution to rural groundwater. What she keeps getting are bits and pieces, one to deal with, for example, grape growers in Willcox, another to deal with some specific issues up in northwest Arizona. And she said that's fine, but to the extent that we don't deal with the underlying problem, we're not advancing it. And so I can foresee a couple more groundwater veto bills. So getting to 143, which is the record, and past that should not be an issue.
BRODIE: Well, so Howie, you spoke with the governor. The governor was on The Show last week and when I asked her about it, she said, you know, look, basically I'm going to paraphrase, if the Legislature keeps sending me bad bills I have to keep vetoing them. I've asked for, like they know what I've asked for, but that is obviously not the opinion of the GOP legislative leadership. What have they told you?
FISCHER: Well, there's a couple of different things. Some of it is philosophical. Look, we know, and I think everybody in the Legislature knew that when they sent her the bills about what schools could call students based on pronouns or what bathrooms they could use, these are going to be vetoed. They were vetoed before. It was sort of a duh moment for lack of a better word.
But lawmakers are saying there are some major public policy issues out there that we think we as a Legislature as the policymakers should be addressing, and the decision to veto them was sort of on the cusp. For example, one of the bills said the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, our Medicaid program, should prominently feature on its website places where pregnant women can get help in terms of their needs and where they can get help on adoption.
The governor vetoed it, not because of what it did, but somehow because of what it didn't do. She said, well, we just passed Prop. 139. We cemented in the Arizona Constitution, the right to abortion, and therefore, this undermines the right to abortion. Probably a stretch there, but again, election year is coming up. The governor's playing to her base. The Republicans are playing to their base, and I think the Republicans, part of the reason we have so many vetoes is last year we were only in the neighborhood of 74 because it was an election year. I think the Republicans were saying, you know, why poke the bear?
Well, the Republicans did very well in the Legislature in the last election. I think they're feeling their strength. And they're going to keep sending her stuff to make points with their own constituencies and to their extent they believe that they're advancing public policy, particularly in the area of immigration where they know that's the governor's soft spot.
BRODIE: Right. Well, and Howie, the bill you mentioned about access at the governor veto that also had provisions in there that kind of related to her and her last inauguration, right?
FISCHER: Well, this was a separate bill that had to do the, the, well, well that's an interesting one in and of itself. One of the bills that they sent to her said if you're bidding on a state project, you will disclose, it's just probably disclosed elsewhere, but it's really hard to find, you will disclose all the money you gave to the governor and this administration in terms of campaign finance and probably a few other things perhaps their legal defense fund, which obviously became a big issue.
She vetoed it, but she made no mention of any of that. She said, well, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System is currently exempt from rulemaking, and this would end their exemption from rulemaking, and that's why I'm vetoing it, ignoring the fact that she's been under a lot of scrutiny for Not having, as she put it, when she was running for office, the most transparent and accountable administration in history. So everybody has an excuse for what they want to do.
BRODIE: Howie, you mentioned legal defense fund and that became a pretty big issue last week. What is the governor, if anything, saying about this money that she has been raising that we don't necessarily know who it's from?
FISCHER: Well, as she points out, it is legal. Back in 2016, the Legislature amended the law to say any money given for a candidate's or public official's legal defense is not subject to campaign finance reporting. We have some fairly active campaign finance reporting laws in the state, including Prop. 211, which traces money back to its original source.
Now, interestingly enough, the governor voted against those changes when they were passed. Now she's sort of taking advantage of one of the provisions. Again, nothing illegal about it, but it raises a lot of questions in terms of how much was given. We can't even get a bottom line in terms of does she have a million dollars in there? Does she have $4 million in there?
And the other piece of it obviously beyond who gave and where they are trying to exercise influence. There's no auditing because it's exempt from campaign finance law. We're assuming based on her word that this is all spent on, let's say, Andy Gaona, who's one of her attorneys, and it wasn't spent on something else. Again, that total exemption means nobody gets to take a look.
